Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The Hard Hat Riot

On May 8th in 1970, four days after the Kent State shootings, a group of construction workers decided enough was enough and proceeded to kick a lot of hippies butts because of their desecretion of the flag. It became known as the Hard Hat Riot and showed how polarized our country was back then.

This disturbance occurred four days after the Kent State shootings in Ohio. The anti-war protesters had set up, symbolically along the statue of George Washington on Wall Street and were reportedly waving Viet Cong flags and defiling American flags in a protest against the Kent State shootings and the expansion into Cambodia of the war in Vietnam. The "Hard Hats" proceeded to storm the statue's base in anger and set up American flags, then pursued the fleeing protesters. The resulting chaos then spilled out onto the Pace University campus and New York City Hall. This was understandably one of the slowest days on New York Stock Exchange in months, as the construction workers were unexpectedly joined by white collar office workers from the exchange. [Emphasis added.]